Class Action Alleges Insurer Called Plaintiff 18 Times Using ‘Predictive Dialers’
Defendant Medica Central Insurance and 18 Jane and John Does acting on its behalf violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleged Christopher Prosser in a Jan. 24 class action in Jefferson County, Missouri, Circuit Court, removed Thursday (docket 4:24-cv-00276) to…
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U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis. Medica and its agents use automated systems to make outbound telemarketing calls and text messages to hundreds if not thousands of consumers across the U.S., soliciting consumers to purchase their services and insurance policies, in violation of the TCPA and the Missouri No-Call law, said the complaint. It alleges the defendants contacted numbers on the national do not call registry without their owners’ express written consent. Medica’s calls to a telephone subscriber on the Missouri DNC list is an “unfair practice” because it violates public policy and because it forced Prosser “to incur time and expense without any consideration in return,” the complaint said. Medica’s unlawful conduct “effectively forced” Prosser to listen to its advertising campaign, it said. Prosser personally listed his cellphone number on the national and Missouri DNC lists in February 2022, yet he received more than 18 telemarketing calls and text messages from Medica or its agents since Sept. 14, alleged his complaint. All the illegal telemarketing calls “were condoned, encouraged, enticed and ratified” by Medica and its agents, employees and vendors, said the complaint. The Missouri resident’s privacy and right to seclusion “has been grossly, deliberately, and repeatedly violated” by the illegal telemarketing calls, it said. He was “severely annoyed, harassed and humiliated by myriad telemarketers when he instructed them to stop calling his phone,” it said. Medica and its agents placed numerous calls “with one or more predictive dialers,” it said. Predictive dialers are capable of storing, producing and dialing any phone number, and they’re capable of storing, producing and dialing numbers “using a random or sequential number generator,” it said. No human manually entered Prosser’s cellphone number when Medica or its agents made the alleged calls, it said. The predictive dialer electronically dialed Prosser’s number “in an automated fashion,” thus constituting an automatic telephone dialing system, in violation of the TCPA, it said. The TCPA allows for treble damages of up to $1,500 for each knowing and willful violation, but the Missouri DNC call statute ratchets that up to $5,000.